


And Still Begin to Sing it Again

by Silikat



Series: Story-Cycles [1]
Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Allusions to Actual Greek Mythology, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Not sure what to call this one, Reflecting on stories, a hint of, and cycles of stories, and what it means to tell those stories despite knowing how they end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 06:21:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19245571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silikat/pseuds/Silikat
Summary: It's an old song; an old tale, they say. One that Hermes first heard many years ago, when the world was a little younger and the gods still made their home on Olympus. Long has Hermes wanted this story to have a better ending for the young lovers, but the wheel of Fate turns against him. The story goes the way it always has. So why keep telling it?





	And Still Begin to Sing it Again

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for a brief depiction of alcoholism, nothing more explicit than in the show.

The story begins, the way it always has, with a poor boy and a young girl falling in love.

He was a Muse's son – Orpheus, his name was, with a gift of music. His voice could charm the birds down from the trees, his lyre-playing so beautiful that grown men would weep just from one chord. The girl's name was Eurydice, the daughter of the trees, with beauty and grace such that any mortal would fall in love as soon as look at her. Her eyes met his across a woodland glade, and they fell in love beneath the summer sun, and it was not long before the pair were married.

At the same time, in another place, the messenger of the gods was hard at work. Hermes, second youngest of the Olympians, danced over the boundaries between the mortal world and the divine, carrying communications between the gods. Zeus and Hera argued about his latest conquest, Aphrodite spurned Hephaestus for a lover more beautiful, Demeter wept for her lost daughter. And through it all, Hermes ran, with proclamations of love or scornful words of war, carrying the stories of the gods through the world of men.

It was not long after that Hermes first met Eurydice.

He thought nothing of it at the time – just another girl gone before her time, another soul to take to the Underworld, the realm of Hades. With his golden wand in hand he led her through the darkness, through the caves and tunnels below the earth to the lands where human souls lingered in their final places. He delivered her to the hands of Charon and made his way back to the surface, for the young god had many people whose souls would sink into the arms of death that day. The girl was just one more.

Later, he heard the rest of the story, from a mortal man sitting on the bank of the river Hebrus. The boy had lost his wife to death in the form of a snake's venom, and travelled to the Underworld to claim her back. He sang a song to break the heart of Lord Hades, and the Underworld fell silent as it listened to his plea. The Lord of Death allowed him to return with the girl if he didn't look behind him on the way back to the mortal realms. But the boy had looked, and the girl was gone, never to return again.

It was a sad tale, like many of the stories of mortals. Hermes smiled, thinking on a time not long past where he had made a similar journey, travelling to the realm of the Lord of Riches to bring a young girl back to her home. But he was a god, and his task was on behalf of Lord Zeus, to rescue his half-sister Persephone from Hades, who had taken her from her place.

He raced to the Underworld to tell the girl she could return home, but he found her stood by the side of the Lord of the Dead as a pomegranate fell from her hand. She met his gaze with a cool stare, arm in arm with the King of the Underworld, his cold eyes lighting with blue fire as he grinned at her. Hermes remembers shaking his head, raising an eyebrow. "Sister, you've got it bad." She just laughed, a light, melodic sound echoing through the caverns.

Hermes went on his way, thanking the mortal man for his story. But this wasn't the last time he heard that tale.

Some decades later (but what is the passage of time to a god?) Hermes was carrying the dead to the Underworld once more when the girl resurfaced. Eurydice, with her skin as brown as bark and her long dark hair, flower petals falling from her braided locks. On her ankle were twin punctures, the bite of a snake. She was killed dancing with naiads on her wedding night, but Orpheus was already on his way to the Underworld to claim her back.

This time, Hermes stayed in the Underworld after delivering the girl to Charon. Before too long the boy arrived, pale and trembling, clutching his lyre like a lifeline. Hermes stalked silent as the night behind him, passing pale phantoms and spectres loosed from their sepulchres, before he stood once more before the Lord and Lady of the Underworld.

Hades and Persephone sat on their twin thrones, giant before the boy who called up to them, making his presence known. With faltering voice he began his plea, then lifted his lyre and began to play.

The Underworld stood still at the first note. Sisyphus stopped pushing his boulder, Tantalus did not reach for food or drink, Ixion's wheel stopped turning, and Cerberus forgot to bark as the boy opened his mouth to sing. Even the Kindly Ones wept to hear his song, so powerful and rich that it resonated with the song of the gods themselves. Persephone’s eyes were wet with tears, and Hades stood to decree that Orpheus was granted his wish. Eurydice would return to him, if he could make it to the surface once more without turning his head to her.

And Hermes, fleet-footed messenger, followed beside Orpheus, for he remembered how this tale was to end. The boy walked steadily through the caves and caverns of the Underworld, the shade of his lover following silently behind every step. But the boy could not hear her sweet voice on the wind, nor the slap of her sandal on the stone beneath, nor the hiss of her breath in the air behind him. His face began to fall, his step grew less steady, and his hands clenched to fists by his side. Hermes watched with fear, for he knew that this would be the boy's doom.

At last they were at the entrance to the Underworld, but just before he could step outside, the boy turned his eyes to look upon his wife once more. There she was, shrouded in darkness, pain stinging her features. He held his arms out to her, but she was slipping fast into the shadows, and he clutched at only air. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she cried out "Farewell!", but then she was gone. Orpheus was alone, with the silent and invisible presence of the god of messengers.

The boy sat on the earth below him, and Hermes took a step back, the scene fading before his eyes as he crossed a boundary between the worlds. He stood there for a moment, outside of time, outside of the mortal world and halfway to the divine, as three women dressed in grey melted out of the shadows towards him. One carried a spindle and distaff, the second, a measuring rod, and the third had a pair of shears tucked into her belt. He acknowledged them with a raised hand, his eyes still focused on the boy's weeping form, a silhouette in the mists.

"You can't save him," one of them hissed in his ear, low and seductive. "This is the way his story ends, the way it always ends."

"The girl in the underworld, the boy destroyed." Another of the ladies stepped forward, laid her arms on his shoulder. "Such a sad song."

"But inevitable." The third lady wound a golden string through her fingertips. One end had been neatly cut through, leaving it trailing in the air before him. "We are creatures of song and story, messenger. And this is how the tale unfolds."

"Must it always end like this?" Hermes hadn't expected to speak, was merely thinking aloud. He knew how these stories grew. If the mortals remembered a tale, it was doomed to be told, relived again and again as they passed it down between them.

The first lady clicked her tongue. "If it didn't, it would be someone else's story. Some things must stay."

"This is a tale that will be told and retold, Argus-slayer." The second lady took his arm, and he fell into step with her, walking away from the mortal realm. "Someone must keep the narrative turning."

"So it falls to you?"

"It is our nature. Can you help the contents of the messages you carry from Olympus?" The lady that had spoken drew the golden thread out from her fingers. She took the end that had been cut and placed it on the distaff of the first, winding it back.

"Still," said Hermes. He knew as well as any that none, man or god, could change the will of these three ladies. But something in the boy's story had touched his heart, something about seeing him fail where Hermes himself had once succeeded. "There must be some way..."

"Perhaps." The first lady took up the golden thread, the distaff beneath her arm as she started to spin.

The second lady smirked, a dark gleam in her eye. "But remember, psychopomp."

"You cannot fight Fate," said the third, and with that all of them were gone, melted back into the shadows of the world between realms.

It wasn't long before Hermes found the mortals again. The players took their places; the curtain rose, and the story began its circuit once more. Someone would need to carry the girl to the Underworld, after all, and that duty was his by right. The first time, he was content to just watch as the familiar scenes played out again. The boy and the girl meeting, and losing each other. The boy's journey, his song, the chance he was given. His long and lonely walk back to the surface. His head turning. And in the darkness of the tunnels, Hermes saw what the boy could not. A golden thread reaching its end, the snap of shears echoing through the Underworld.

Hermes stood outside the story, outside the lives of the mortals, for though he was the one who carried them to the Underworld he was not a part of the narrative, and so could not interfere. One time he tried – appeared to the boy in mortal form before he met the girl, tried to warn him of what was to come. But the boy laughed off his portents as the rambling of a man deep in his cups, and the next day locked eyes with the woman who was so briefly to be his wife.

And as time and again he found himself watching the story, the world around them was starting to change. Borders shifted, wars were fought and lost, and the places Hermes had once thought familiar were vanishing around him. Yet there it was, every time; Orpheus and Eurydice, sometimes with different names, sometimes with different cultures, but still the same underneath.

Once he was walking invisible behind the boy when he chanced to look up at where the Lord and Lady of the Underworld were sat, on their twin thrones over the many souls that thronged the banks of the unliving. It was strange, he thought, how he could live outside of this story while his half-sister and her husband were tightly woven into it. When the boy once again came to the Underworld, they seemed to be surprised at his passion, shocked when he started to sing, as though each time was the first. But Hermes could always see the three ladies lurking behind the throne, the second of them spinning out the thread, and he had his answer then, for even the gods, despite their power, are playthings to the whims of Fate. The story would come undone if the Lord and Lady remembered.

They, too, seemed strange to Hermes. Where once Persephone would lean her head on her husband’s arm, stroke his pale skin, now she sat small and silent in her throne, her head bowed. When she spoke to her husband, her voice was bitter, sarcastic. Hades thundered his proclamations from beside her, heaping scorn onto the boy and the rest of the dead. His bargain with the boy had once seemed an act of mercy; now it was colder, crueller, the condition spoken with a mocking voice, his laughter following Orpheus as he set out towards his doom and his destiny. He could barely hear their love song, the love song of the gods that had always echoed through the caverns and tunnels of the Underworld.

And so the story was told, and retold, and in each cycle Hermes would look to the ending in vain, willing the boy to keep his head steady, hoping beyond hope for a better finale. Yet each time, the boy turned to see her, and her soul flew into the Underworld once more, waiting to be reborn.

One day he decided to try a different tactic. He abandoned the boy and the girl, their ever-unwinding story, and travelled incognito in the mortal world, searching for the storytellers. This realm had changed many times since last he had walked it. Cities once made of stone had now grown thick with metal and glass, spilled out over their original boundaries to fill the earth with people. The air was dense with smoke from the chimneys, the people grey and thin as they worked through their days and nights for little recompense, while a select few grew fat on the profits.

Hermes walked among them, in the grey and nondescript suit of a businessman, trying to find the place where the stories were told. He had been too long away from the affairs of mortal men other than Orpheus and Eurydice, though as the Lord of Commerce he had felt the changes within himself. Once when he appeared in this realm, he wore the cloak of a voyager, the tunic of a merchant, but now the mortals saw him in suit and tie. Though they had not worshipped him nor his kin in many centuries, at least not by name, they still venerated them in a different way. Hermes stopped by banks, markets, shopping centres, anywhere trade was taking place, and each time he felt reinvigorated as the petty words of thanks from the mortals washed over him.

His search for storytellers was less fruitful. He found the fable retold again and again – in ballets, in poetry, in paintings and symphonies and operas, but he could not find a teller of tales who spun a better ending for the poor boy and the young girl. Listless, he walked the lands of the humans, listening to their petty concerns and watching as they fought each other.

Such sights did the god of travellers see! Rivers choked with oil, automobiles bleeding smoke into the sky, electricity crackling across open fields. Everywhere he looked, mankind pursued its march towards industry, hoping beyond hope for the chance of becoming rich while the rich polluted the air, the sea, the green and growing places.

Hermes thought to Hades and Persephone once more. Him becoming loud, merciless, caring not for the human cost of his actions. Her diminished somehow, buried beneath the weight of his anger, her soft smile turned to bitterness and barely restrained rage.

Gods are more powerful than mortals could ever dream of, and yet it is the mortals dreaming of them that gives them this power. Hermes looked out at the world of men and sighed a deep and weary sigh for the life he once knew, and the half-sister caught in the crossfire between men and their ambitions.

He was crossing back through the world of the divine, shedding his mortal guise and slipping once more into the mists, when he heard a voice from behind him. "We didn't think you the god of compassion, ram-bearer." The silk-smooth voice of the lady of the spindle melted out of the silence.

Hermes didn't turn his head. "Good evening, ladies."

He heard them approach before he saw them, triplet shadows coalescing into their familiar shapes. Three women in grey, the symbols of their duty held tightly to them. They circled around him, their faces hazy before his eyes. "Are you still so fixated on the boy?" It was the lady of the measuring stick who had spoken. "You know his story can end no other way."

"Not the way the mortals tell it." Hermes kept his voice deliberately neutral, his expression blank and unfathomable. "But this story is changing."

"Changing, yes, but not the ending." The lady of the shears smirked. One hand resting on the shears belted to her waist. "Endings are always final."

"Always?"

The spinner raised one elegant eyebrow. "You wish to tell the tale yourself?"

Hermes shrugged, a small smile playing at the corners of his lips. "I know it well enough."

The ladies looked between themselves. "The balance must be maintained," the allotter said carefully.

"What would you suggest?" Hermes' voice was light, inquisitive. For all the world this could have been just an idle fancy, a game he wished to play.

The ladies were still looking between themselves, a silent communication. Hermes often wondered if they shared a mind and a single consciousness, or if they were indeed three separate beings, albeit similar. After a long moment, the inevitable one nodded, and looked back to him. "You can tell the story," she said. "But we will be there too, keeping it on track."

Hermes sucked in a breath, his mind racing. Would that be enough? But then, he had no inclination to quarrel with the Moirai. "Yes," he said, before he could talk himself out of it. "I will agree to those terms."

The ladies smiled, taking a step back from him. "Good luck, lord of the boundaries," said the spinner, already winding the golden thread of their story back onto her spindle.

"But remember," said the allotter, her slender fingers grasping one end of the thread. "If change comes, it will have to be from them."

The inevitable one's eyes bored directly into his. "It must be their story," she said, and with that the trio were gone.

Alone in the mists, Hermes blinked slowly, letting out his breath. The story was his, now. He didn't know how he knew that. There were words deep within him, buried within his chest, waiting to spring free from his tongue; words that hadn't been there before. He could feel the weight of it on his shoulders, the burden that had passed to him. But before he began the story once more, there was one thing that he had to do.

Hermes remembered a time when Hades' realm was known as the Underworld, and the way to it was through miles of caves and caverns beneath the earth. Now it was a town, Hadestown, and you found it at the end of the railway tracks, in the blazing hot underbelly of the world. And yet, if you asked any of the mortals, they would tell you that Hadestown was always there, and always will be. Stories supplanting stories, and every one of them true if you look at them right.

He hadn't been here before, not in this form, though he knew of the change from his travels in the mortal world. As the Industrial Revolution took shape in the mortal realm, the Underworld had shifted to match, for Hades was the god of riches as much as death. And what was death, too, but that life on the assembly line, the long shifts in the factories and warehouses for crumbs from the tables of the wealthy?

Hermes took the route he always walked, a hidden stretch of tunnels not easy for mortals to travel, but a sure way to Hadestown. Instantly, he was greeted by a shield of brick – the River Styx had changed since he saw it last. But his divine nature opened many doors, and slipped through to the town proper.

A wall of heat seared his skin as he stepped through. All around him was the ringing of metal on metal, harsh cries from foremen spurring workers on, the resounding clatter of boots upon stone. Hermes looked around for the seat of the gods – there, in the centre, looming over the factories was a plantation-style house, and on its balcony a figure in black, fan wafting cool air to her face.

He went in closer, stepped through the air to stand beside her on the balcony. Persephone sat staring out at the teeming mass of the dead, eyes blank. Her dress seemed to be woven from midnight, tiny jewelled stars sparkling in the fabric, and her hair was tossed casually over her shoulder. By the side of her chair, tucked discreetly away, were three empty bottles. There were shadows under her eyes that Hermes had not seen before. She seemed older somehow, in the strange and ineffable way that gods aged. It was hard for him to see that young girl holding the pomegranate in her, with her jaw set in anger and wine clouding her judgement.

Still, Hermes smiled. "Sister, good to see your face."

Persephone blinked, looking up at him as though she hadn't noticed him arrive. "Hermes," she said with surprise, a small smile curving her lips. "You are out of place. Since when'd you come to Hadestown?"

He waved a hand, sitting himself down in the empty chair next to hers. "Oh, you know, I've been around." There was a pause, the air between them thick with years of neglect. Hermes knew what he wanted to ask her, though he feared he already knew the answer. "Sister, where'd the seasons go?"

Scoffing, Persephone reached under her chair for another bottle, the dark liquid sloshing around as she brought it to her lips. "Do you really want to know?" she said. "I have been a prisoner here for many winters, many years."

That image flashed through Hermes' mind again. Persephone, young and grinning, arm in arm with her lover, the smell of pomegranate in the air. He remembered the smoking chimneys of the world above, the rivers thick with oil. Small wonder the Underworld that had once been her refuge was now her prison. It was not hard to see how Hades - king of iron, king of coal, king of the riches that grew beneath - had reflected the worst of humanity, smelting the walls of her refuge into iron bars.

"Sister, that's the way it is. You and I, we both know this." She had sealed her fate when she chose to remain with Hades, all those years ago. Hermes looked sideways at her, but Persephone was just shaking her head.

"Brother, once it was so sweet. Now all I taste's wine and defeat." She put the bottle down, clinking it against the others, and sat back in her chair with a sigh, closing her eyes.

Hermes tried again, gentler this time. "Sister, where did your love go?"

It was her turn to wave a dismissive hand. "With the wind, away it blows. The Underworld burns hotter now, there's nothing here that's natural."

He had to admit she was right. The factories, the mines, the machinery that clogged the arteries of Hadestown were like nothing he had seen before, at least not in the world of the divine. Still, he sighed. "Sister, can't you change your view? The world needs bringing into tune."

Persephone opened her eyes, reached for the bottle. "The whole world's broken, that is true. But there's nothing you or I can do."

Hermes opened his mouth to speak again, but that was when he heard a noise over the rattling and clanking from the town below. A door, slamming; footsteps on the stairs. He stood, hastily brushing off his clothes. He’d never had much time with the Lord of the Dead, but he didn’t want to take the chance of aggravating him. "Sister, I think I should leave."

She held her hand out to him. "Say you'll come back soon, Hermes.” Her tone was different, almost sincere, and her expression hid a secret pain. Then the moment was gone, and her smirk returned, her voice light and playful. “To meet, and talk of Fate and love."

Despite himself, Hermes grinned. "I'll see you in the world above."

He could feel the story now, feel the lives of the boy and the girl as they were reborn into the mortal world. He took some time to watch them – her, struggling along the railroad track against the wind and in search of work, him, sitting on the outskirts of a town playing his guitar and singing to himself – before he closed his eyes, found the rhythm, and took up the song.

“Once upon a time, there was a railroad line,” Hermes began, and so the tale spun out once more.

Hermes knew this story by heart, every beat of it. Still, it brought a smile to his face to see Orpheus and Eurydice meet once more, at the edge of a settlement by the old railway line. He was young and cocky, with an ever-present smile on his lips, always looking like he was just about to get up and dance. She was harder, more accustomed to the harsh world outside, a survivor. Yet with her he was humble, with him she was alive. They fell in love under the summer sun, and all was bright and happy.

That was the golden time, when Hermes sat in the balmy heat, watching the young lovers laugh and dance and sing together. His sister, too, was there, commanding the attention of the mortals just by walking into the same room, grinning and flirting and sharing the goods she carried with her. But his heart was heavy, for he was burdened with the story – with the cold nights and dark days he knew were coming. And sure enough, soon Hades came for her, on a train made of polished brass. Hermes watched as the Lord of the Underworld took Eurydice to a secluded corner, as Orpheus sat writing his songs and not listening.

It ended the way it always did. Hermes stood at the mouth of the tunnel, watching as the boy collapsed to his knees. The sharp sound of shears closing permeated his ears. He shook his head, eyes tight shut, and concentrated on the story as it wound back to the beginning. _Once upon a time, there was a railroad line._ He could will it back to life, speak it into existence.

But nothing changed. The story was the way it was. The only difference now was the teller, Hermes caught up in the story, not sure if he was retelling it or reliving it. They danced before him, Orpheus and Eurydice, Hades and Persephone, running around him in circles ready to play their parts. Again and again, he told the story, and again and again it went the same way.

One time, he found himself standing below a tree, waiting for the boy to realise that his lover had descended.

"Eurydice?"

There he was, his voice touched with love, a hint of concern creeping in at the edges. He stumbled into the clearing, his dark hair messy, his red jacket a vibrant splash of colour in the cool blues and greens of the wood's edge. Hermes looked at this boy and he hated him, in that moment, for being the reason she left. For ignoring her, for neglecting her, for prioritising his song over everything else and causing her to seek shelter elsewhere. His voice was scornful, his words mocking as he told Orpheus what had happened.

The boy’s face fell. He took a step back, shaking his head. Hermes scoffed. He could recite this encounter in his sleep, the words were the same every time.

“Do you really wanna go?”

“With all my heart.”

Hermes sighed. “Ah, with all your heart.” There was such sincerity there, that was the problem. He knew that the boy believed everything he was saying. He really would follow her forever, and who was he to judge? After all, he had followed them, followed their story all this time. Orpheus wasn’t to know how many times this had happened before. “Well,” he said, tipping his hat to him. “That’s a start.”

He watched as Orpheus disappeared into the tunnel, and out of sight. Soon he would need to follow, narrate his journey into the darkness, but for this

A few more cycles came and went. Orpheus and Eurydice were reborn, time and again, to live out their old familiar story. Still, things were changing. Orpheus’ arrogance was melting away, replaced by something softer, a kind of innocence. Eurydice was still angry, still scared, but she was quicker to trust the boy that would become her lover, standing by his side for longer each time the tale cycled back. But still, Hermes watched night after night as the three ladies followed Orpheus down the track, whispering doubt and fear into his mind.

In the next cycle, he was there earlier. Orpheus, younger, sitting at the end of a bar with his guitar in his lap, scribbling lyrics onto a napkin between shifts. Hermes approached him, reading over his shoulder. A few kind words was all it took for a boy starved for affection, his eyes lighting up just to see Hermes speak to him. There was something of his mother in his smile, an old face Hermes remembered from the time of Olympus, long ago. He grasped the boy by the shoulder and promised him his patronage, his mentorship. He told Orpheus of the gods, of the way things were in times long past, and waited every day for Eurydice to walk in the door.

He went to her just like Hermes thought, and the song of his love sprouted from his lips soon after. He took her by the hands and danced with her, Eurydice laughing as they whirled around each other, meeting in the middle with a tender kiss. Hermes stepped back and watched as the rest unfolded around him. But still Eurydice went to Hadestown, and Orpheus failed at the last moment.

This time though, Hermes lingered in Hadestown for a moment, watching. He saw Persephone climb aboard the train once more, her hand almost stroking her husband’s as he helped her on board. He stood watching her leave, watching the lamplight shining from the polished exterior of the train, until he could neither see nor hear her. The workers stood with bated breath, watching as their master stood silent, still. Here, on the platform, he was smaller somehow. More human.

And then the cycle started again, and Hades’ heart grew cold, the smile slipping from his face. Hadestown kept its relentless pace, and Persephone in the world above drank to forget one half of every year. The workers toiled beneath the earth, every second and every breath. And Orpheus and Eurydice met once more.

Hermes tried, all through that telling. He pleaded with the boy to notice the storm as it rolled in, turn his face to the winds before the girl was blown away. He willed Hades to not listen to the ladies, let them go with no terms, no conditions. But still he found himself watching Orpheus fall to his knees, and let out a strangled cry as Eurydice vanished.

The next cycle, he did the same as before. Met the boy earlier, took him under his wing. But this time he guided him away from the place where they were to meet, from the girl sitting in the corner trying to keep her candle lit. He talked to him about music, about the song the boy was trying to finish, and by the time Orpheus got away Eurydice was gone, back out to the railway tracks and the promise of work a little further down the line.

Hermes steeled himself for triumph, but Orpheus the next day was sitting at the bar again, strumming a few minor chords. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, this subtle shift in mood, but Hermes had spent lifetimes watching this boy, and he knew when something was missing. Days went by, weeks, and still he sat there, in the corner of the bar with a guitar and a half-finished song on his lips. Outside the world was scorched by the sun and frozen by the winds, and beneath the earth Hades and Persephone danced to a bitter tune while the workers lives were used in drudgery. Somewhere along the line, Eurydice turned her collar up and wrapped her arms around herself, the spark of light fading in her eyes. The story was cut off before it had even begun, and the world was out of tune.

So he set the tale back on its tracks. And still, it ended the same way. 

But Hermes was smiling as he began to sing it again. Because he understood why now. It had taken him years, decades, centuries, but now that the tale was his he realised the point of the telling. When you are the storyteller, you can see the audience.

Mortals dream of the gods, and their dreams shape the divine world. If they can dream of hope even in a time of despair, that hope becomes a possibility. Orpheus may be doomed to fail, but he is also doomed to try. Every time the tale is told, just before its dénouement, he brings the world back into tune. One life is ended; a thousand others can begin, better for hearing that song of love. That is why the tale must be told, the song must be sung. So that it can give its listeners hope for a new and brighter world.

The story ends the way that it began. With a poor boy, and a hungry young girl, falling once more in love.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where this came from. I just love stories, and stories about stories. Road to Hell II always resonated with me in that manner, and I got to thinking - why is Hermes even involved in this narrative? What's his connection to all of this? He isn't in any of the original stories, after all. And I started to imagine how Hermes-the-god could have gotten himself caught up in this story of two young mortals in love, and two gods. Learning that Hermes was a psychopomp, and that he was the one who went to get Persephone out of the Underworld gave me some pieces. 
> 
> I've thought for a while that Hermes and the Fates share the narrator role in the show - he the benevolent narrator, them the more antagonistic ones. I've also noticed that Hermes seems to link himself with Orpheus, while the Fates take Eurydice. That connection was something I wanted to explore, as well as the cyclical nature of this story. They're gonna sing it again, after all. Maybe all the versions of this story, the Greek tellings as well as the earlier productions of Hadestown in New York, Canada, and London, are all connected in one evolving narrative. That's the thought that led to this.
> 
> Also, when you're in Hadestown, you have to talk in song. That's a carryover from the other Hadestown fic I wrote. Don't know why I'm setting myself this extra challenge, but it's very fun to write! This time, Hades and Persephone have a conversation set to the Chant/Wedding Song music. It seemed appropriate.
> 
> Anyway, please leave kudos if you liked it, and comment even if you didn't! Feedback is useful if it's good or bad :)


End file.
